In and Beyond Great Power Diplomacy: Can Competition and Cooperation Co-Exist in US-China AI Governance?
Guest post by Ruofei Wang What role can diplomacy play in managing the competitive dynamics and cooperative potentials between the United States (US) and China—the world’s two biggest AI and military superpowers—on governing AI? The landmark Trump-Xi Summit in May 2026 marks a historic moment in US-China relations, amid the increasingly fierce AI, defence, and […]
Machine Guardians, Human Monsters, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Take the Terminator Franchise Seriously
The core aim of the AutoNorms project has been to develop a new theoretical approach for studying the relationship between practices of designing and using autonomous weapon systems (AWS), international norms, and the global governance of emerging technologies. In addition to my contributions to cataloguing the practices of human-machine interaction associated with the global development […]
Three Takeaways from the US Military-Anthropic Dispute
By Anna Nadibaidze and Robin Vanderborght The public dispute that erupted recently between the US Department of War (formerly Department of Defense) and the technology company Anthropic has captured the attention of global media and experts. Anthropic has developed the popular large-language model (LLM) Claude, which is not only used by private consumers worldwide, but […]
Trump’s AI Race Action Plan: Removing Barriers to a Militarized Silicon Valley
Guest post by Tommaso Del Becaro The publication of the long-awaited America’s AI Action Plan by the federal government of the United States in July 2025 represents a crucial juncture in AI governance. Aimed at maintaining the US’ “unquestioned and unchallenged global technological dominance”, the AI Action Plan is the latest step by the Trump […]
Why Investigating Tech Startups in Algorithmic Warfare Matters
On 29 May 2025, the tech startup Anduril Industries and the Big Tech company Meta announced a privately funded collaboration to design and develop extended reality products integrating AI for the US military. This is just one recent example of private tech companies’ growing involvement in supplying the US government with AI-based products for defence […]
Google’s Brave New World? Big Tech, Military AI, and the Trump Effect
In recent days, Google’s update of its AI principles that avoids clear ethical pledges in contrast to the 2018-version has gained attention. While this could be seen as a major policy shift of a big AI player, I argue in this post that it underlines an intensification of business activities that were already part of […]
“Mission Impossible”? Talking Popular Culture at the REAIM 2024 Summit
The simultaneous release of the films Barbie and Oppenheimer on 21 July 2023 was a cultural phenomenon. “Barbenheimer”—as this event was popularly called—captured global attention. It also invited reflection on how the public comes to think about the politics of nuclear weapons and what role pop culture plays in this process. Released a week prior […]
The Creator of New Thinking On AI? Popular Culture, Geopolitics, and Why Stories About Intelligent Machines Matter
Whilst the depiction of weaponised artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in popular culture is often highly inaccurate and dramatized, Hollywood blockbusters provide the starting point from which many members of the public begin to develop their thinking about these technologies. For instance, news articles discussing AI are often accompanied with images of metallic silver skulls with […]
A Question of Trust? New US Initiatives to Tackle the Human Control Problem
A lack of or a substantially diminished quality of human control is often understood as the major problem associated with military AI. The US Department of Defense (DoD) ‘Directive 3000.09’ that was released in 2012 as one of the first political documents on autonomy in weapon systems, for example, states in its updated version from […]
Can Track II Dialogues be the New “Ping-Pong” Diplomacy to Thaw the Sino-US Relationship on Military AI?
China and the US find themselves increasingly enmeshed in a deteriorating relationship as the two countries contest for primacy across many fields. Both Beijing and Washington view technological leadership, especially an edge in artificial intelligence (AI), as vital to gaining an upper-hand in this intensified power contest. As the two rivals scale up investment in […]